Ottawa tech founder Julia Slanina has dedicated her career to women’s health care, but she never expected to be the one wearing the hospital gown.
In November, 36-year-old Slanina went to the doctor for a routine screening and came away blindsided by a cervical cancer diagnosis.
“I’ve been advocating for (women’s health) the last five or six years in my own company, but now to be the patient having cancer and going through the system as the person in the gown – being in the gown is very different from thinking you know what it feels like,” she said. “It’s very scary. I will tell you it is terrifying.”
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Slanina is the founder and CEO of Treehouse, a digital health software company that supports health-care providers in the maternal and early childhood space.
It’s an idea that came to her while she was in medical school.
“My son was a year old when I started medical school,” she told OBJ. “My passion was always to be in a space where we can help and support children and women’s health.”
While health was a rapidly growing area for technology companies, Slanina said women’s health remained underserved. It was that gap that she wanted to fill.
“A lot of millennials like myself and gen Z consume technology and always refer to it, but they’re not getting their care through it,” she said. “I thought, we need to help and support these patients, support maternal care, but how do we do it? The way that we do it is to support health-care providers and send them technologies that can basically streamline their care and then it trickles down to the patient.”
But working in that space, with those providers and patients, didn’t prepare Slanina for her own diagnosis.
“It was a complete shock,” she said. “I lead a very healthy lifestyle. I exercise, I take care of myself, I have a young family. So to be diagnosed with a woman’s cancer was a huge shock, because of my age and also because I understand that it’s underfunded. I understand that it’s been overlooked for decades and decades. So I know how important it is, but now to be a patient … It’s scary.”
Slanina will soon undergo surgery and then a course of treatment to address the cancer. Though she won’t be in the office five days a week, she said she’s determined to continue leading Treehouse during the process.
“I started this company with the mission to improve patient outcomes,” she said. “I’m not interested in putting a stop to that because I got a diagnosis. That doesn’t mean I’m going to be in the office every day, I’m not a lunatic. Health is important but I’m not going to step down and say I’m packing my bags and walking away from my company.”
While she’ll lean on her team, she said, “I will still oversee all activities. But I will very much take a period to take care of myself, because I have to be there for my son and my family before my company. That’s more important.”
After she recovers, she said she wants to use her personal experience to revolutionize cervical cancer care in Canada.
“I think it just reaffirms my passion for women’s health care and the importance of innovating and funding these spaces,” she said. “Whether that’s research or getting money to hospitals, whether that’s giving money to businesses to build technologies that help hospitals or clinics to help patients. It reaffirms my passion that I see already that there are gaps in the way care is done and we can do better. And I can be an advocate for that.”
She said she’s received an outpouring of support from the community, both through messages and also through donations to her GoFundMe page, which was set to help offset the costs of intensive medical treatment like hers.
She added that January is cervical cancer awareness month.
According to the Canadian Cancer Society, approximately 1,600 women across Canada were diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2024, and 400 will die from it each year.
The majority of cervical cancers, about 70 per cent, are caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV), which the organization said about 75 per cent of sexually active people will contract at least once in their lifetime.
Slanina said her diagnosis highlights the importance of regular screenings like pap smears.
“It’s important to be responsible and mindful because there are vaccines out there that can help prevent (HPV infection). It’s important to think about regular screenings, that early detection piece,” she said.
“My treatment plan is aggressive. Because of my age, they want to cure me so that I can live a happy and fruitful life and I don’t have to deal with this again.”